Syria peace talks are deadlocked as the regime and the opposition remain unable to move past a crucial sticking point — the role of President Bashar al-Assad in the country's future.

Negotiations appear to have fallen apart, and the ceasefire between rebels and the Syrian regime has effectively collapsed.

The peace talks, which have taken place in Geneva, Switzerland, are "at best stalled and at worst already collapsed," Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 and current fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Business Insider in an email.

And if the regime and opposition fail to reach a deal, Syria's terrorism problem is likely to fester and grow even worse.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter indicated to a Senate committee last week that peace in Syria is still a long way off.

"Our strategy ... is that Assad leaves, the structures of the government remain in place — but without Assad — and that the moderate opposition becomes part of the government and there is a government that can give the Syrian people what they deserve, which is a country that runs and a country that's moderate and a country that treats its people decently," Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"We're a long way from that now, but that's the vision for Syria," he continued.

Fred Hof, a former special adviser for transition in Syria under then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said the US is pursuing "a very risky strategy of incrementalism" in Syria.

"If we win the race against time with ISIS in Syria we'll be very fortunate," Hof told Business Insider in an email.

Ford, the former ambassador, said progress towards national reconciliation is "vital to undercut ISIS and Al-Qaeda recruiting" in Syria. As long as Assad is committing atrocities against civilians in Syria, terrorist groups can convince people that they are Syrians' best bet for protection against the regime.

Hof noted that US officials seem to acknowledge that "as long as Assad is in power somewhere in Syria, there is no prospect for a political solution that would produce a united front against ISIS."

But the US might be damaging its credibility in the peace process that aims to end a five-year civil war that has caused massive bloodshed, an international refugee crisis, and the rise of terrorist groups in the Middle East, Ford said.

"In the absence of US pressure on the Syrian government and Russians to abide by the cessation of hostilities fully [the US] becomes irrelevant to securing a peace deal for Syria," Ford said, citing airstrikes on a hospital in Aleppo as a recent act of impunity on behalf of Assad regime allies.

Fighting is likely to keep escalating in Aleppo. And with that escalation in violence, chances of a peace deal become "nil," Ford said.

"The US keeps saying it is 'concerned' about Syrian government and Russian actions, but beyond handwringing it has no real response," Ford said.

The regime and its allies don't seem willing to budge on the issue of Assad staying in power. The opposition insists on a political transition that would see Assad stepping down, and the US insists that Assad cannot be part of Syria's future.

"Assad and national reconciliation just don't mix," Hof said. "Assad's portfolio of war crimes and crimes against humanity makes him pure poison."

The US seems to hope that Russia, which is backing the Assad regime and carrying out airstrikes against rebels in Syria, will help plan a political transition.

The Russians "are the ones that have the most leverage over Assad right now," US Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "It's very important that they do that because, as [Dunford] indicated, there's no resolution of the Syrian civil war until that occurs."

SEE ALSO: Syria's ceasefire is collapsing, and Russia seems ready to get back into the fight

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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is ready to send ground forces into Syria to tackle Islamic State militants if need be, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, as two more rockets fired by the group struck a border town.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would respond to all rockets fired by Islamic State and vowed that the jihadists would suffer greater losses if they continued their aggression.

Turkey has argued the case for ground troops in Syria in the past, although it has always said it would not mount a unilateral incursion unless its national security was threatened. 

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Davutoglu said United Nations resolutions give Turkey "legitimacy" to enter Syria to fight Islamic State and others in the name of self-defense.

"If ground troops become vital, we would send them. We are ready to take all measures inside and outside Turkey to defend ourselves," he said in the interview late on Tuesday.

His comments came hours before two more rockets struck Kilis, a border town where 19 people have been killed so far this year from repeated artillery strikes.

No one was hurt in Wednesday's incident, when the shells hit an empty field near the town center.

"Recently our town of Kilis has been persistently hit by harassing fire, many of our citizens have lost their lives. Every attack has been responded to and will continue to be," Erdogan told a meeting of local administrators.

"Daesh has suffered its greatest casualties in operations it undertook against Kilis. If it continues, it will see greater losses," he said in comments broadcast live. Daesh is an Arabic term for Islamic State. 

SHELLING AND AIR STRIKES

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the militants in Syria and northern Iraq and has stepped up its efforts after initial reluctance to confront the group, which controls swathes of territory along its border.

The United States and Turkey have for months been discussing a military plan to drive Islamic State from the border. 

Turkey has fired 5,330 shells against Islamic State, destroying many gun positions, shelters and bases and killing 370 militants, the state-run Anadolu Agency said on Tuesday.

There have been 167 Turkish air strikes against the group in the same period and 492 jihadists have been killed, it also said. The death toll includes 32 militants killed in northern Iraq near the Bashiqa military camp, it said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu voiced frustration over Islamic State's continued grip in Syria and Iraq despite what he said was a near two-year long effort by the U.S.-led coalition involving 65 countries.

"Daesh should be cleared from the region. This is the most permanent solution," Cavusoglu told reporters.

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The new deadline for Syrian President Bashar Assad's transition out of power: August 1, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a press conference at the State Department on Tuesday.

"The target date for the transition is the first of August," Kerry told reporters. "So we're now coming up to May. So either something happens in these next few months, or they are asking for a very different track."

The ultimatum was reminiscent of Kerry's warning in 2011 that Assad's days were "numbered," as well as President Barack Obama's "red line" speech in 2012 outlining the conditions — namely, the use of chemical weapons — that would prompt the US to take action against the embattled dictator. But then, as now, Kerry did not specify what "track" Washington would take to force Assad's ouster.

"That is for the future," Kerry said.

Kerry responded to questions about Assad's departure after announcing a new plan to end the latest wave of violence in Syria's largest city, Aleppo, where more than 250 civilians have been killed in less than a week by government airstrikes and rebel shelling.

Under a new ceasefire arrangement, US and Russian military officials "will be sitting at the same table" at a coordination center in Geneva to monitor and document any violations of the truce, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday, in a news conference from Moscow with the UN's envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura.

The truce will include Aleppo moving forward.

Russia — a staunch ally of Assad — had initially refused to include Aleppo in the cessation of hostilities agreement because of Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra's presence in parts of the city. It used the group to justify the continued airstrikes.

As a result, joint US-Russian efforts to end regime bombardments there have largely been made on Moscow's terms, and Kerry admitted that negotiators are still trying to figure out how to target Nusra — which is not party to the cessation of hostilities agreement — without hitting rebel groups who have agreed to abide by the ceasefire.

“Are they somehow commingled? Are they fair game? These are the kinds of things that have to be worked out, so that there’s no misunderstanding” about “who is doing what, where, when and how,” Kerry said. “We don’t control the terrorists."

In any case, Kerry insisted the US would not allow Aleppo to fall to the government. He said there would be "repercussions" if forces loyal to Assad did not abide by the new terms. 

"If Assad does not adhere to this [ceasefire], there will clearly be repercussions, and one of them may be the total destruction of the ceasefire and then go back to war," Kerry said. "I don't think Russia wants that. I don't think Assad is going to benefit from that. There may be even other repercussions being discussed."

Again, however, Kerry did not specify what consequences the Assad regime or Russia would face if it violated the ceasefire agreement.

"If Assad's strategy is to somehow think he's going to just carve out Aleppo and carve out a section of the country, I got news for you and for him: This war doesn't end," Kerry said. "As long as Assad is there, the opposition is not going to stop fighting."

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The Russian Defense Ministry has announced the withdrawal of 30 of it's attack planes, including all of the Su-25 Frogfoots, from Syria on Wednesday.

This announcement follows a March 14 declaration that Russia would begin removing it's attack planes from the war torn country.

At the time, only a small number of Su-34 “multidimensional bombers” were withdrawn from Hmeymim airbase near Latakia, Syria, where Russia also operates a naval base.

Although Russia's stated intention in entering the Syrian civil war was to combat the international terror group ISIS, their actions have since shown their true focus was on supporting the Assad regime.

Since Russia announced their withdrawal from Syria, Syrian forces, with Russian advisors and air support, have reclaimed the ancient city of Palmyra from ISIS, though documents uncovered by US Special Forces suggest that Assad and ISIS had a pact that allowed ISIS to remove its heavy weapons from the city in exchange for handing control over to the regime.

The Su-25 Frogfoot is a close air support platform that has seen heavy use since it's deployment to Syria in late September, 2015. During their deployment, the Frogfoots were one of the most destructive planes used against the Syrian rebels.

SEE ALSO: Assad reportedly struck an ominous deal with ISIS to recapture Palmyra

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Violence in Syria's largest city has escalated so dramatically that hospitals there are being forced "to choose patients to save because there aren’t enough doctors to treat everyone," a surgeon there wrote on Wednesday. 

The epicenter of Syria's brutal civil war shifted decisively last week to the divided city of Aleppo.

There, warplanes loyal to the government have been dropping bombs with "such ferocity that even the stones are catching fire," Osama Abo El Ezz, the Aleppo coordinator for the Syrian American Medical Society, wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

"As one of the few remaining doctors in Syria, I have watched the 'cessation of hostilities' that was agreed on in February crumble," El Ezz said, referring to a truce between government and rebel forces brokered by the US and Russia just over two months ago in Geneva.

He continued: "We know that for the community we serve we represent a last hope, the final defenders of life in this city. But we are also among the fallen. We have all lost medical brothers and sisters to barrel bombs and missile strikes, but we keep on working through the night."

An airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo last week prompted international outcry as the fragile ceasefire collapsed and the city erupted in a new wave of violence that has resulted in a "catastrophic deterioration" of the city.

Under a new ceasefire arrangement, US and Russian military officials "will be sitting at the same table" at a coordination center in Geneva to monitor and document any violations of the truce, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday, in a news conference from Moscow with the UN's envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura.

The truce will include Aleppo moving forward.

But Jeff White, a military analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the plan "likely won't hold up."

"This is a military-technical fix to what is essentially a political-strategic problem," White said on Twitter. "Also, it seems that Russia has succeeded in getting the US officially involved in its (and regime) operations in Syria."

Indeed, Russia — a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — initially refused to include Aleppo in the cessation of hostilities agreement because of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra's presence in parts of the city, which it used to justify the continued airstrikes. As a result, joint US-Russian efforts to end regime bombardments there have largely been made on Moscow's terms. 

At least 250 people have been killed in Aleppo since April 22, including at least 40 children. Aleppo's last pediatrician, Dr. Mohammad Moaz, was killed in the strike on Al-Quds hospital. His final moments were captured on CCTV cameras just before the hospital was reduced to rubble.  

"We are running out of coffins to bury our friends, family and colleagues," El Ezz wrote.

Government forces, while able to inflict larger-scale massacres with airstrikes, are not exclusively to blame. At least three people were killed and 17 wounded when rebels shelled a maternity clinic in a government-held area of Aleppo on Tuesday, in the sixth assault on a medical facility in the city in less than a week.

The violence forced the city to cancel its Friday prayers "for the first time in Aleppo's centuries-long history" last week. It prompted Lina Sergie, an activist from Aleppo, to "think that perhaps we have crossed a line" in the war "that has never been crossed before."

Indeed, many in the besieged city have already lost hope and are now simply "waiting for death," El Ezz wrote. "Some people even pray for its swift arrival to take them away from this burning city."

Read the full op-ed at The New York Times >>

SEE ALSO: John Kerry just drew a new red line for Assad in Syria

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AMMAN (Reuters) - Air strikes on a camp housing Syrians uprooted by war killed 28 people near the Turkish border on Thursday, a monitoring group said, and fighting raged in parts of northern Syria despite a temporary deal to cease hostilities in the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included women and children and the death toll from the air strikes, which hit a camp for internally displaced people near the town of Sarmada, was likely to rise.

Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of the city of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday. But fighting continued nearby and President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought total victory over rebels in Syria.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a "regime of calm" in the city that came into effect at 1 a.m. (6.00 p.m. ET on Wednesday) for 48 hours, after two weeks of death and destruction.

The army blamed Islamist insurgents for violating the agreement overnight by what it called indiscriminate shelling of some government-held residential areas of divided Aleppo. Residents said the violence had eased by morning and more shops had opened up.

Heavy fighting was reported in the southern Aleppo countryside near the town of Khan Touman, where al Qaeda's Syrian branch Nusra Front is dug in close to a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias, a rebel source said.

Government forces carried out air attacks on the area and rebels were attacking government positions around the town, pro-Syrian government television channel Al-Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Pro-opposition media said an Islamist insurgent carried out a suicide bomb attack against government positions in Khan Touman.

A TV station controlled by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army, said the army used a guided missile to destroy a suicide car bomb before it reached its target in that area.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Islamic State militants captured the Shaer gas field in the east of the country, the first gain for the jihadists in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Amaq, an IS-affiliated news agency, said Islamic State militants killed at least 30 Syrian troops stationed at Shaer and seized heavy weapons, tanks and missiles.

Russian war jets were also reported to have struck militant hideouts in the town of Sukhna in the same Palmyra desert area.

"FINAL VICTORY"

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory in the five-year-old conflict against rebels across Syria, state media reported.

In a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin thanking Moscow for its military support, Assad said the army was set on "attaining final victory" and "crushing the aggression".

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed overnight in rebel shelling of the Midan neighborhood on the government-held side of Aleppo, which was Syria's commercial hub and largest city before the war.

Twenty rockets fell on government-held parts of Aleppo on Thursday, state media said.

But a resident of the rebel-held eastern part of the city said that although warplanes flew overnight, there were none of the intense raids seen during the past 10 days of air strikes.

People in several districts ventured onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of al Shaar neighborhood said.

Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend toward calm. "From last night it was positive and my wife went out to shop and shops opened and people breathed. We did not hear the shelling and bombing we had gotten accustomed to," Sameh Tutunji, a merchant said.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city's main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard.

"Although we’re seeing less fighting today, the massive onslaught of violence over these past two weeks would make almost anything look like improvement," the North Syria Director for aid organization Mercy Corps Xavier Tissier said.

"We aren't going to celebrate a temporary break in targeted attacks on civilians and aid workers. The cessation of hostilities must hold for the long term," Tissier said.

Rebels also said government helicopters dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held Dahyat al-Rashdeen al Junobi, northwest of Aleppo, and near the Jamiyat al Zahraa area, which saw a rebel ground assault pushed back on Wednesday.

The recent surge in bloodshed in Aleppo had wrecked a February cessation of hostilities agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow, backers of the rival sides. The truce excluded Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

A spokesman for the mainstream opposition said the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC) supported the deal but wanted the truce to cover all of Syria, not just Aleppo. It accused the government of violating it.

Syria's foreign ministry said in response to today's fighting: "The criminal violations of the regime of calm in Aleppo reveal without a doubt the true face of the armed terrorist groups supported by Turkey, Saudi, Qatar and other states, and that they only want blood and fire for Aleppo without caring if they kill Syrians and destroy their country."

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The United States condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's statement that his goal is a final victory over the city of Aleppo and urged Russia to exert its influence over Damascus to ensure a cessation of hostilities continues in the city.

Just a day after the start of the temporary truce, Assad sent a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin saying his army would not accept anything less than "attaining final victory" and "crushing the aggression" by rebels in Aleppo.

"We call on Russia to urgently address this totally unacceptable statement," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing on Thursday. "It's clearly an effort by Assad to push his agenda, but it is incumbent on Russia to assert influence on that regime to maintain the cessation of hostilities."

Syria has asserted the cessation of hostilities will last 48 hours, but the United States is pressing for it to be made open-ended.

SEE ALSO: John Kerry just drew a new red line for Assad in Syria

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Russia's Mariinsky Orchestra performed in the amphitheatre of the Syrian city of Palmyra. Vladimir Putin watched via video link.

Produced by Claudia Romeo

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A renowned Russian conductor led a triumphant concert Thursday in the ruins of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, once terrorized by the Islamic State group, even as an airstrike on a refugee camp in the north left at least 28 people dead and dozens wounded, including many children.

The performance in the same ancient amphitheater where militants from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh, carried out widely publicized killings — and called "A Prayer for Palmyra"— was intended to send a message that Russia's presence in Syria would bring hope and stability.

But even as strains of Bach and Sergei Prokofiev's First Symphony echoed through the Roman theater packed with an audience that included Russian servicemen, Syrian government ministers, and children in colorful native dress, the war raged elsewhere.

Images posted on social media of the aftermath of the airstrike that tore through the Sarmada camp in rebel-held territory close to the border with Turkey showed tents burned to the ground, charred bodies, and bloodied women and children being loaded onto a pickup truck.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack on the camp in Idlib province where some 2,000 internally displaced people had taken shelter from the fighting in nearby Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 people were killed, while the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said more than 30 died.

The White House called the strike "indefensible." There was "no justifiable excuse" to target civilians who had already fled their homes from violence, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, calling the situation "heartbreaking."

Earnest said it was too early to say whether Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces carried out the attack, but he said he had no knowledge of any US or coalition aircraft operating in the area.

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien called for an independent investigation, saying that if the camp were deliberately targeted, it "could amount to a war crime."

The footage of charred bodies and desperate men pouring buckets of water to try to douse the flames was in stark contrast to the concert at the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, where renowned conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg.

The archaeological site was badly damaged by the ISIS militants who held Palmyra for 10 months before Syrian forces backed by Russian airstrikes retook it in March. During the concert, which was broadcast live on Russian television, images of the military action were shown, as well as footage of the destruction of monuments and ISIS militants marching residents to their deaths.

Among those in the audience were Russian sappers who have been carrying out demining in the town to remove bombs left by the ISIS militants.

In opening remarks, Gergiev, a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that with the concert, "we protest against the barbarians who destroyed monuments of world culture." In a video linkup, Putin also addressed the audience, saying he regarded the concert "as a sign of gratitude, remembrance, and hope."

The upbeat tone was at variance with the violence elsewhere in Syria, where a double-suicide bombing in central Homs province killed at least 10 civilians and a fierce rebel assault on a government position in the north overshadowed a shaky cease-fire imposed over the city of Aleppo.

At least 49 people were wounded in the attacks on a village 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Homs, Syria's third-largest city, according to state media and the regional governor, Talal Barrazi.

A car bomb first exploded in the main square of the village of Mukharam al-Fawkani. As people gathered to help the victims, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated explosives nearby. Four children and three women were among those killed, according to Syrian state TV.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the ISIS has carried out several similar deadly attacks in Homs province. The area is close to where Syrian troops and ISIS gunmen have been fighting for control of the vital Shaer gas field, which fell to ISIS on Wednesday after the extremists overran 13 government checkpoints and captured a Syrian soldier. The Observatory said 34 government troops and 16 militants had been killed in three days of fighting there.

Meanwhile, relative calm prevailed in the deeply contested northern city of Aleppo, the center of the worst recent violence, following a truce announced Wednesday by US officials in agreement with Russia. The Syrian military said the truce would last only 48 hours.

But a Lebanese TV station embedded with the Syrian army said Syrian rebels were waging an offensive on a government-held village south of Aleppo.

SEE ALSO: Photographs reveal the destruction left behind by ISIS in the ancient city of Palmyra

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NOW WATCH: A Russian orchestra threw a surprise concert in the ancient city of Palmyra

The Syrian military denied on Friday it had conducted air strikes on a camp near the Turkish border that killed at least 28 people, but a top UN official said initial reports suggested a government plane was responsible for the "murderous attacks".

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said Thursday's attacks were almost certainly a deliberate war crime. France called them a "revolting and unacceptable act that could amount to a war crime or crime against humanity".

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said women and children were among those killed in the attack on the camp near the town of Sarmada, which sheltered people fleeing the five-year civil war. The monitoring group said the death toll could rise further because many people were seriously wounded.

In a statement published by state media, the Syrian military said: "There is no truth to reports ... about the Syrian air force targeting a camp for the displaced in the Idlib countryside."

Syria's ally Russia said none of its aircraft had flown over the camp. It said militants from the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front might have deliberately or accidentally fired on it.

UN rights chief Zeid said in a statement: "Given these tent settlements have been in these locations for several weeks, and can be clearly viewed from the air, it is extremely unlikely that these murderous attacks were an accident."

He said his organization and others would "leave no stone unturned in their efforts to research and record evidence of what appears to be a particularly despicable and calculated crime against an extremely vulnerable group of people."

Initial reports suggested the attacks were carried out by Syrian government aircraft, but this remained to be verified, he added. He urged governments on the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that there would be "a clear path to punishment for those who commit crimes like these".

Charred tents

Footage shared on social media showed rescue workers putting out fires which still burned among charred tent frames, pitched in a muddy field. White smoke billowed from smoldering ashes, and a burned and bloodied torso could be seen.

Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday.

Zeid said most of the people in the camps had been forced to flee their homes in Aleppo in February because of sustained aerial attacks there.

He said he was also alarmed about the situation in Syria's Hama central prison, where detainees had taken control of a section of the prison and were holding some guards hostage.

"Heavily armed security forces are surrounding the prison and we fear that a possibly lethal assault is imminent. Hundreds of lives are at stake, and I call on the authorities to resort to mediation, or other alternatives to force," Zeid said.

SEE ALSO: Russian orchestra performs amid Syria's ruins as airstrike nearby kills 28

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NOW WATCH: A Russian orchestra threw a surprise concert in the ancient city of Palmyra

Mohamed Keita started taking pictures at Rome's Termini station with a disposable camera. He photographed his neighbors, the people who lived and slept next to him during the months he spent living on the streets.

A photo taken in 2010 of his earthly possessions — a shoulder bag and plastic sack atop a pile of cardboard — that he entitled "J'habite a Termini" ("I live in Termini") helped the now 23-year-old launch a promising career in photography, with exhibitions in various Italian cities in the years since.

At 14, Keita was orphaned during the civil war in his native Ivory Coast and he eventually decided to escape. He banded together with a group of other children and set off on a dangerous odyssey that took him through Guinea, Mali, the Sahara Desert, Algeria, and Libya, where he was imprisoned for five months. Upon his release, he made the treacherous voyage across the Mediterranean towards Italy, but he says the smuggler landed them in Malta, where he lived in a refugee center for a year. Finally, three years after he left his homeland, he and a group of other African migrants stuck in Malta made the 60-mile sea journey to Sicily.

"I never thought I would end up living on the streets," he told VICE News. "When I was a child I didn't even think I would ever leave my country. But I found myself in a situation I didn't expect that forced me to leave my hometown."

Keita says that as well as the obvious hazards of running into criminals, local authorities, and unsafe travel routes along the way, loneliness has been a major obstacle.

"When I lost my parents in my country I found myself completely alone; during my journey, in all the countries I traveled through; and also during my first few months here in Italy," he said. "But lately I met some very nice people, and this makes me love [Rome] even more."

* * *

The mass flood of migrants and refugees arriving on Europe's southern borders hasn't stopped in 2016. According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), so far this year, more than 154,000 people have arrived in Greece, while 28,583 reached Italy. One third of all arrivals recorded in January were minors, many of whom were unaccompanied.

Recent figures released by the European Commission's statistics bureau Eurostat show that in 2015, almost 90,000 asylum requests to European countries came from unaccompanied child migrants — nearly four times the applications received in 2014.

The country with the largest portion of unaccompanied minors among asylum seekers in 2015 was Italy: 56.6 percent of all minors making applications were unaccompanied.

In some cases, they are orphans like Keita seeking the safer shores of Europe. Other times, their families pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers to give their children a chance for a better life in the richer north.

A report from Save The Children states that in 2015, over 16,000 children arrived in Italy by sea — more than 10 percent of the country's total arrivals. Of these, over 12,000 were unaccompanied minors, mostly from Eritrea, Egypt, and Somalia.

The majority of unaccompanied minors arriving in Italy are aged between 15 and 17, but there are some cases of 11 and 12 year olds traveling on their own. They are mostly boys.

Not all of them, however, apply for asylum. Looking at the Eurostat data, 4,070 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Italy in 2015 — that is only one third of the total number of unaccompanied child migrants who arrived in the country last year.

Figures published by the Italian Ministry of Labor and Social Policies show about 5,000 unaccompanied minors were reported to be missing by shelters or foster families between July and December 2015. In January 2016, Europol's chief of staff Brian Donald told the Observer that at least 10,000 child migrants and refugees disappeared in Europe in 2015, and that was a conservative estimate.

The real figure in Italy and across the continent is probably much higher, according to Donald and other analysts, as there are likely thousands of children who never register with authorities in the first place.

Before making it to Europe, these children have endured long and treacherous journeys, exploited by human smugglers and traffickers who steer their victims' lives from the beginning of the trip until after their arrival. 

Some set off from Afghanistan, traveling through Iran, then Turkey, and finally Greece and the Balkans; others, like Mohamed, leave countries in central or West Africa and cross the northern half of the continent through Guinea, Mali, and the Sahel, before boarding the rickety boats that should, hopefully, bring them to the Italian coast.

Once the minors arrive in Italy, they go through a pre-identification process, where they give their personal details to the Italian police forces and immigration officials. They state their nationality, their country of origin, their name and surname — and they are often photographed too.

At this point, the registered child migrants and refugees should be transferred to more permanent reception centers or foster families elsewhere in Italy. But many quickly slip through the net.

According to Italian journalist Luca Attanasio, these minors often get stuck in temporary centers where they are first welcomed, and it takes months for them to be transferred to more permanent accommodation. Attanasio recently published a book entitled Il Bagaglio (The Suitcase) which details the stories of around 30 unaccompanied child migrants, along with a series of interviews with police forces and government officials and data regarding the issue.

"In theory, these kids should stay in these initial reception centers for a few hours or a few days at most," he said. "However, in different areas of the country, especially in Sicily and especially in 2014, a huge backlog built up, so these kids were stuck."

This means the children can't start building a life, they can't go to school or do any kind of activity: they have nothing to do and, consumed by boredom and a feeling of uselessness, they escape.

A great number of child migrants don't want to stay in Italy at all, but aim to reach countries in northern Europe like Sweden, Germany or the UK. In some cases, they want to join family members or friends who already live in other European countries; in others, they travel north in search of a country with a healthier economy, where they'll have a better chance of going to school and eventually finding a job, where integration is easier and more likely.

"They rule out the possibility of staying in Italy with certainty, and the few that remain are an exception to the rule," said Michele Prosperi, a spokesperson for Save The Children in Italy.

"Naturally, these children want to become invisible, they don't want to be identified, they don't want to provide their fingerprints, they don't want to enter the system because they want to continue towards their country of destination, and they fear they could be sent back to their country of origin," he said.

This invisibility, combined with their young age, makes them extremely vulnerable to human traffickers and local mafias, say Europol and NGOs. Criminal gangs can charge them extortionate prices for onward travel or exploit them for cheap labor with little fear of repercussions — the children have no system in place or relatives nearby who can protect them.

* * *

A specific case is presented by the flows of young Egyptian migrants. According to Save The Children, these minors come from extremely poor backgrounds, and they're usually sent to Italy by their families, to earn money to send back home.

VICE News met Momen at a dirty little park near Rome's Termini station. The 16-year-old was sitting alone, listening to Egyptian music on his phone as he waited for his friends to join him. He told us that he decided to leave Alexandria when he was 13: he had stopped going to school, and worked as a fisherman and a mechanic, and also helped his father who is an electrician.

"I left Egypt in search of a better future for myself, and so I could help my family back home," he said.

His parents supported his decision to undertake the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.

"There were a few Egyptians on the boat, but most of the passengers were Syrian," he said. "The boat we were on wasn't in good shape. That's what the traffickers do: they know they're going to lose the boat, so they don't use good ones. The Italians had to come get us out at sea."

His father paid 3,000 euros for the journey, which lasted 10 days. When he arrived in Italy, Momen was registered by the authorities and was lucky enough to end up in a boarding school in Sicily, where he finished his middle school. After that he left for Rome in search for work. Now, he has a pizza-making certificate and has started working at a pizzeria three times a week.

"I've felt very lonely, without my family and with very few friends" he told VICE News. "I manage to speak to my parents every few days, but as soon as I turn 18 I want to travel to Alexandria so I can see them again."

Momen, like Mohamed, is one of the lucky ones: the Italian immigration system seems to have worked in their case, and possibly gave them a future they can count on. But countless others are not as fortunate, or patient.

Many other Egyptians go on the run as soon as they arrive at the initial identification centers in southern Italy: they want to make sure they reach Rome or Milan, two cities where the Egyptian community is especially strong. Once they reach the cities, many end up being exploited as they try to find a job, make a living to support their family back home, and repay their debt with the human traffickers.

"They need to start earning quickly in order to repay the debt they incurred during their trip. This is why they're willing to be exploited in the labor market, to be involved in illegal activities or sexual exploitation — this is something we have confirmed," Prosperi explained. Egyptian minors are usually exploited by other Egyptians or, in some cases, by people who were given custody of the children.

The Egyptian community is particularly active in certain sectors of the labor market: carwashes, kebab shops, construction and scaffolding businesses, and fruit and vegetable markets. According to Save The Children, minors who work in wholesale fruit and vegetable markets "enter 'illegally' around 8am, and they try to find some work for the day. They earn 10 euros if they fill an entire truck, which takes two hours. Sometimes they have to unload the truck too, and in that case they work for five hours, bur for the same fee. They earn 50 cents for every crate they are able to fill."

Those who are employed in carwashes "work continuously for up to 12 hours, making 2 or 3 euros per hour." The situation is similar in restaurants or greengrocers, while minors who work in kebab shops tend to earn around 50 cents per hour. There's also a high risk these children might be involved in illegal activities like drug dealing.

While the overwhelming majority of unaccompanied children arriving in Italy are boys, Nigerian girls are the exception. They are the main target of traffickers in the business of sexual exploitation. Nigeria is the only country from which more under-aged girls arrived than boys in 2015, according to Save The Children.

According to Prosperi, they arrive in Italy as part of an "organized system" that has its roots in Nigeria and its branches in Europe.

Usually between 15 and 17 years old, they are told by the traffickers to pretend to be over 18 to avoid the safeguards in place for minors, because such safeguards would make it difficult for them to contact their exploiters. The girls often escape from reception centers after a couple of months, and since they stay in contact with their traffickers, they are immediately swept into their criminal network.

The Nigerian girls are usually taken to Naples, which seems to be an important sorting center, and then travel on to their final destinations all over Italy, facing years of prostitution to pay back the 30,000 to 60,000 euros they owe their traffickers.

* * *

The issue of missing and exploited child migrants and refugees isn't confined to Italy, and isn't a new phenomenon. Last October, the Swedish town of Trelleborg reported 1,000 refugee minors had disappeared from the city. In 2010, the British Asylum Screening Unit estimated that about 60 percent of unaccompanied minors housed in reception centers in the UK go missing, and the NGO Terres Des Hommes found the same year that a significant proportion of unaccompanied child migrants who arrive at reception centers in Belgium, France, Spain and Switzerland disappear within the first 48 hours — in some circumstances 50 percent of them.

These children may disappear from government care, but they do not disappear from view, pointed out Europol's Donald. "If they're being abused it's in the community," he said. "They're not being spirited away and held in the middle of forests, though I suspect some might be, they're in the community — they're visible." He called on the general public, alongside officials, to be more aware.

Taking better care of child migrants would ultimately benefit everyone, said Attanasio, the journalist. "The stories of the kids I met over the past two years brought a lot of sadness and a lot of anguish, because I have two children of the same age," he said.

"But they also gave me lots of hope, because these kids have been through a lot. If they receive the attention they need, if they have the chance to continue with their plans... they are a huge human and economic resource for our country."

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After nearly two weeks of brutal shelling and urban combat left hundreds of people dead in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Russia and the United States declared a tentative truce in the city on Wednesday.

"Today there was no bombing, at least in our area," an Aleppo doctor who asked to be identified as Abu Luay told VICE News just hours after the announcement. Speaking via a messaging app, he said his colleagues at the hospital were relieved at the halt in the fighting.

"Part of the staff had been working in another location over the past few days," Luay said. "The maternity unit had moved to another area where they could work in a basement, but today they came back."

Like much of the war-torn country, Aleppo is divided. Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad control the western half of the city, while mixed rebel factions hold the east. Areas around the city have periodically changed hands, and the regime's recent gains have put it within striking distance of totally besieging the rebel-held east. But forces within the city have been locked in a stalemate for almost four years. Snipers hunt in the no man's lands that divide the city, both sides lob shells across the front lines, and regime airstrikes have reduced much of the east to rubble.

Medical facilities and personnel have borne the brunt of the fighting. Last week, a series of airstrikes hammered the Doctors Without Borders-supported al-Quds Hospital in the eastern half of Aleppo, killing more than 50 civilians, including hospital staff and patients. Three others were reportedly killed and more than a dozen wounded when shells struck the al-Dabit Hospital in the western half of the city on Tuesday.

The US government and the Syrian regime offered conflicting statements on the timing of the truce. US State Department spokesperson said Wednesday that the truce had gone into effect that day at 12:01am local time. The Syrian military, meanwhile, said the truce would go into effect at 1:00am Thursday and only last for 48 hours. Pockets of fighting persisted in various areas on Wednesday.

"The regime can't be trusted," Abu Luay said. "But at least the pace or the intensity of it might be less if there's something signed."

State Department spokesperson Mark Toner admitted to reporters Wednesday that the truce is tenuous. "This all hinges on the idea that we as well as the Russians can influence the main combatants on the ground to uphold a cessation of hostilities," he said.

Violence in Aleppo intensified in late April and early May as a fragile nationwide ceasefire brokered by Russia and the US came apart. Over the past week and a half, the air above the city has thickened with mortar fire, rockets, and aerial bombing.

A local doctor who uses the name Abu al-Izz described how he and his team had desperately worked to save colleagues who had been caught in the bombing of al-Quds Hospital last week. Rescue workers had barely finished digging bodies out of the rubble on Wednesday.

"It was extremely difficult, because our colleagues — the doctors, nurses, the medical staff — we saw them all wounded and we had to give them emergency care," the doctor said. "We were imagining that those could be us, that we might need someone to treat us — and maybe, if we were wounded or our hospital was bombed, we wouldn't find anyone."

Because of the destructive power of the Syrian government's air force and artillery, more civilians have been killed in the eastern rebel-held side of the city than in the regime-controlled west. But for those living in the west, rebel shelling has also been terrifying and deadly. On Tuesday, 19-year-old Omar hid in a hallway as mortar fire rained down near the campus of Aleppo University, where he studies IT. A few of his friends were hit by what he says were stray "explosive bullets", but he escaped unscathed. When the barrage died down, he sprinted for his life from the school.

"I never thought I could run so fast," he said.

Rebel and regime representatives consistently deny responsibility for civilian casualties. Opposition fighters told VICE News that they strike legitimate targets and rejected the idea that their use of improvised weaponry was inherently indiscriminate.

Abu Yousef al-Muhajir, military spokesperson for the opposition faction and Islamist movement Ahrar al-Sham, acknowledged that rebels were mostly using locally manufactured mortars and "hell cannons"— rockets made from propane tanks packed with explosives. But he denied ever targeting civilians.

"Our bombing is on the regime's military areas," he insisted.

"It's very possible that some of the shells could have been sent from the regime itself," said Abu Yasir, a spokesperson for the Aleppo faction the Levant Front, when asked about civilian casualties in the regime-held west. He said his group receives some support from a joint operations center in Turkey that includes personnel from the United States and other allied countries.

Russia's government has also denied responsibility for bombing the al-Quds Hospital. On Wednesday, a Russian military spokesperson claimed that the bombing didn't even take place, asserting that the hospital had been destroyed months earlier despite the fact that Doctors Without Borders (also known as Medecins Sans Frontires or MSF) has released photos and videos that clearly document the assault on the hospital. US Secretary of State John Kerry implied that Syrian government forces were responsible for the bombing.

"It appears to have been a deliberate strike on a known medical facility," Kerry said, "and follows the Assad regime's appalling record of striking such facilities and first responders."

Both sides are using weapons that seem to guarantee collateral damage.

The regime lacks precision weapons and relies largely on conventional explosives and crude bombs. Such weaponry virtually assures a "large number of civilian casualties and the mass destruction," according to Wael Aleji, a representative of the UK-based Syrian Network for Human Rights. The use of such outdated technology, he said, is by its nature "bombing indiscriminately." Aleji stressed that the regime was responsible for the vast majority of civilian casualties in Syria.

As for rebel shelling of western Aleppo, "it's very difficult to determine which group, or which groups" have been responsible, Aleji said, though he said that reports of rebel shelling were credible. "They use very primitive methods and homemade bombs, like butane gas canisters and other mortar shells that are homemade," he explained, noting that these are also "very indiscriminate methods."

Whether a truce can halt fighting under such circumstances, even for 48 hours, remains uncertain.

Much of the international debate over a truce in the city has revolved around the presence of the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front in the eastern half of the city. The group, which is designated a terrorist group internationally, is not included in Syria's ceasefire.

Russian officials have emphasized the Nusra Front's presence within the city and have charged that the group has sabotaged previous ceasefire attempts. US officials have offered mixed assessments of the size of the group's presence.

"It's primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo," Department of Defense spokesperson Colonel Steve Warren said on April 25. The State Department walked back Warren's remarks in an April 27 statement that denied that Nusra controls the city, but acknowledged that the group's presence complicates the ceasefire. The US has encouraged other rebels to distance themselves from Nusra.

"It is a very fluid situation," State Department spokesperson Toner said on Wednesday. "Nusra is not party to the cessation. We all know that. But we have not seen the regime's actions specifically targeting Nusra; in fact, we've seen them targeting civilian populations as well as opposition groups. So what we want to see is the regime to comply with the cessation of hostilities, which only applies to those who have signed up to the cessation of hostilities."

Rebels inside the city, including a Nusra representative, acknowledged that Nusra Front is present in the city but said the relevant area is mostly controlled by other local Islamist and nationalist factions.

The Nusra Front forces in the city "are local guys," said Levant Front representative Abu Yasir. "They aren't a dominant player here."

Yet the group's presence, even as a minority force, raises questions about the Syrian ceasefire's prospects, in Aleppo city and elsewhere.

Conditioning the ceasefire on Nusra being entirely excluded from it is unworkable, Nusra Front media official Abu Khattab al-Maqdisi told VICE News on Wednesday.

"Nusra Front is present in every liberated area, with only a few exceptions," he said. "If the reason [for excluding areas from the ceasefire] is going to be that Nusra is present, then every area will be excluded from the truce."

Abdulsattar Abogoda contributed to this report.

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MADRID (Reuters) - Three Spanish freelance journalists who went missing in Syria last year and were believed to have been kidnapped have been released, the Spanish government said on Saturday.

The three men - Antonio Pampliega, Jose Manuel Lopez and Angel Sastre - disappeared last July. They were working on an investigative report in the northern city of Aleppo, where other journalists have been captured in the past, Spanish media reported at the time.

Spain's acting deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria had made contact and spoken with the three, a government spokesman said. El Pais newspaper reported the men were now in Turkey and waiting to be brought back to Spain by authorities.

The journalists entered Syria from Turkey on July 10 and went missing shortly afterwards, Spanish press association FAPE said last year. Few details have since emerged regarding their situation.

(Reporting by Maria Vega Paul, Writing by Sarah White; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

SEE ALSO: Syria denies committing a 'deliberate war crime' by bombing refugee camp

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The Turkish military killed 55 ISIS (also known as Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh) fighters north of the Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday evening, according to a report from Reuters.

The report, citing "military sources," says that the ISIS fighters were killed in a shelling, which also took out three vehicles and three rocket installations.

Turkey has a huge problem with ISIS.

The relaxed border policies Turkey adopted between 2011 and 2014 enabled extremists who wished to travel to Syria and join the rebels in their fight against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Turkey tightened a stretch of its border with ISIS-held territory in Syria in February, increasing military patrols and building more walls.

Here's a map which shows Turkey issue with ISIS.

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In the photo below, soldiers and airmen from the international coalition to thwart ISIS stand in front of some of the most powerful military aircraft in the world.

From left to right, we see a U-2 spy plane, a KC-10 tanker, an F-15 Eagle, an F-18 jet in front of an E-3, a KC-30A tanker, an F-22 Raptor, and an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone.

SEE ALSO: Here's how the fledgling Afghan Air Force is training to take on Al Qaeda and the Taliban

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BEIRUT — Top officials in Tehran have vowed to exact revenge for the heavy losses suffered by Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops in a battle in which Islamist fighters seized a village south of Aleppo over the weekend.

Mohsen Rezaee, the secretary of the powerful Expediency Discernment Council, warned Monday that “takfiris” would pay a “heavy price” after killing 13 IRGC members and injuring 21 others in Khan Tuman on May 6, the largest single one-day loss of Iranian troops since it entered the Syria conflict.

The Iranian general hailed the killed Iranian soldiers, all of whom were from Iran’s Mazandaran province along the Caspian Sea, writing in a post on his official Instagram account that their service evoked memories of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War.

Razaee returned to active service in the IRGC in May 2015 following a stint in politics that saw him unsuccessfully run for president in 2009 and 2013. Rezaee commanded the IRGC from 1981 to 2005.

The high IRGC casualty count around Khan Tuman has sent shockwaves across Iran, with local newspaper Ghanooncomparing the clashes to the Battle of Karbala, a highly significant event for Shiite Muslims in which the Imam Hussein died alongside his supporters.

Rezaee claimed that insurgents “took advantage of the ceasefire” to seize Khan Tuman, adding that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were supporting insurgents in Syria.

Another Iranian security official, in turn, said that the attack on the Aleppo village revealed problems with the cessation of hostilities implemented in Syria in late February 2016.

"Since [the] truce plan was put forward, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which didn't oppose it in principle, reminded of its structural problems," Ali Shamkhani—the the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council of Iran—said.

"This event showed that the concerns raised by Iran were fully correct and based on the realities on the ground and that ceasefire would be merely an opportunity for the recruitment and reinvigoration of the terrorist groups by the governments which support them," he further claimed.

Iran has suffered over 400 casualties in Syria, according to reports, including the loss of a number of high-ranking officers. The casualty counts began rising as Iran deployed larger number of troops in support of the Syrian army’s offensives against rebels starting with Russia’s aerial intervention in late September 2015.

In April, Tehran deployed its troops from its regular army, including the 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade, in its first official deployment outside of Iran since the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

SEE ALSO: Why Aleppo is Syria's fiercest battleground

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Turkish border guards shot and beat up Syrian asylum seekers and smugglers, the human rights organisation Human Rights Watch claimed in a report published on Tuesday.

The report, for which Human Rights Watch interviewed victims and witnesses, says that over the past two months, Turkish border guards killed five people, including a child, and seriously injuring 14 others.

“While senior Turkish officials claim they are welcoming Syrian refugees with open borders and open arms, their border guards are killing and beating them,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch.

According to the report, the Turkish government affirms that it has an open-door policy for Syrian refugees, but the human rights group had reported as early as August 2015 that Turkey was pushing back asylum seekers. The report also says that Turkish border guards blocked thousands of Syrians who were fleeing their camp inside of Syria after it had been hit by artillery fire in mid-April.

Turkey is one of Europe's main partners in tackling the worst refugee crisis since WW2, and is a focal point of the bloc's current strategy. The EU struck a deal with Turkey — which has been dubbed the 'pact of shame'— to contain the refugees. The deal has been decried by human rights organisations, who have warned for months that the refugees' safety cannot be guaranteed in Turkey.

The current €6 billion deal includes sending refugees who crossed the border after March 20 2016 back to Turkey, and sending migrants who are intercepted by coast guards in the Aegean Sea back to Turkey. The deal also includes speeding up talks for Turkey's adherence to the EU and VISA-free travel to Europe for Turkish citizens.

Turkish officials have threatened to call off the deal a number of times already, especially because Turkish President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan refuses to change the country's anti-terrorism law, which has prompted the EU to try and find a new way to deal with the refugee crisis, should the deal falter.

The Turkish border guards are accused of a series of shootings and beatings during which three children aged three to nine were injured and one smuggler was beaten to death. Syrians living near the border also told Human Rights Watch that in the aftermath of the shootings and beatings, "Turkish border guards fired at them as they tried to recover bodies at the border wall."

Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Turkish interior minister, urging the government to investigate the allegations.

Read the full Human Rights Report here.

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The US military has released a video that shows the US-led anti-ISIS coalition obliterating an ISIS car bomb near Manbij, Syria.

The airstrike was conducted on March 11 and was part of a larger operation by the anti-ISIS coalition on that day. Altogether, the anti-ISIS coalition carried out airstrikes on four locations in Syria and four in Iraq. 

US Central Command notes that in addition to the strike against the ISIS car bomb, known officially as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), the coalition also struck ISIS tactical units, heavy weapons, and fighting locations in Syria.

In Iraq, the airstrikes destroyed ISIS rocket positions, tactical units, and a heavy machine gun position.

VBIEDs are among the most dangerous weapons in ISIS's inventory. In general, they are advanced enough to produce even macabre amazement in their potential victims. One Baghdad police officer told Der Spiegel that these car bombs "were so sophisticated that they destroyed everything; there was nothing left of the car and nothing to investigate how the explosive charge was assembled."

Aside from smaller car bombs, ISIS has also perfected the use of multiton truck and Humvee bombs as military weapons. Among the group's favorite tactics is filling stolen armored US Humvees with explosives to decimate static defenses of the Iraqi Security Forces.

You can watch a full video of the strike below: 

SEE ALSO: Watch a US-led airstrike level an ISIS facility in Iraq

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Top Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine has been killed in an attack in Syria, the Lebanese Shi'ite group said on Friday, the biggest blow to the Iranian-backed organization since its military chief was killed in 2008.

Badreddine, 55, was one of the highest ranking officials in the group, and assessed by the U.S. government to be responsible for Hezbollah's military operations in Syria, where it is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The killing of Badreddine, a brother-in-law of the late Hezbollah military commander, Imad Moughniyah, is the latest big loss sustained by Hezbollah and Iran in Syria despite Russian military intervention in support of Assad and his allies.

Hezbollah has lost at least four prominent figures since January 2015, and a number of high-ranking Iranian officers have also been killed either fighting Syrian insurgents or in Israeli attacks.

Hezbollah said Badreddine had been killed in a big explosion targeting one of its bases near Damascus airport, and an investigation was underway into whether it was caused by an air strike, a missile attack, or artillery bombardment.

It did not say when he was killed.

The Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen earlier reported he had been killed in an attack by Israel, which has struck Hezbollah targets in Syria several times during the conflict that began in 2011.

There was no immediate response from Israel, which deems Hezbollah its most potent enemy and worries that it is becoming entrenched on its Syrian front and acquiring more advanced weaponry.

Hezbollah, a political and military movement and Lebanon's most powerful group, has grown ever stronger since forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. The sides fought a 34-day war in 2006, their last major conflict.

When asked by an interviewer on Israel Radio about possible Israeli involvement, cabinet minister Zeev Elkin, a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declined to comment.

Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Badreddine's killing was good news for Israel but stopped short of saying Israel was responsible.

“This is good for Israel. Israel isn’t always responsible for this. We don’t know if Israel is responsible for this," he told Israel’s Army Radio."Remember that those operating in Syria today have a lot of haters without Israel."

"But from Israel’s view, the more people with experience, like Badreddine, who disappear from the wanted list, the better,” he added

A U.S. Department of the Treasury statement detailing sanctions against Badreddine last year said he was assessed to be responsible for the group's military operations in Syria since 2011, and he had accompanied Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during strategic coordination meetings with Assad in Damascus.

Announcing his death, Hezbollah cited Badreddine saying he would return from Syria victorious or "a martyr". A photo released by the group showed him smiling and wearing a camouflage baseball cap.

Hezbollah's al-Manar TV said he would be buried at 5:30 p.m. (1430 GMT) in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hijackers sought his release

Badreddine was sentenced to death in Kuwait for his role in bomb attacks there in 1983. He escaped from prison in Kuwait after Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded the country in 1990.

His release from jail in Kuwait was one of the demands made by the hijackers of a TWA flight in 1985, and of the hijackers of a Kuwait Airways flight in 1988.

For years, Badreddine masterminded military operations against Israel from Lebanon and overseas and managed to escape capture by Arab and Western governments.

Badreddine, was also one of five Hezbollah members indicted by the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the 2005 killing of statesman Rafik al-Hariri. The group denied any involvement and said the charges were politically motivated.

The U.S. Treasury statement also said he had led Hezbollah ground offensives in the Syrian town of al-Qusayr in 2013, a critical battle in the war when Hezbollah fighters defeated Syrian rebels in an area near the Syrian-Lebanese border.

Around 1,200 Hezbollah fighters are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian conflict. These include prominent fighters Samir Qantar and Jihad Moughniyah, the son of Imad Moughniyah, who were killed in separate Israeli attacks last year.

Hezbollah responded in both cases, though the incidents were contained with the sides seeking to avoid any repeat of the 2006 war, which exacted a heavy price in Israel and Lebanon.

Hezbollah accuses Israel of carrying out the 2008 killing of Moughniyah, who was killed by a bomb in Damascus.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

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NOVOSASITLI, Russia (Reuters) - Four years ago, Saadu Sharapudinov was a wanted man in Russia. A member of an outlawed Islamist group, he was hiding in the forests of the North Caucasus, dodging patrols by paramilitary police and plotting a holy war against Moscow.

Then his fortunes took a dramatic turn. Sharapudinov, 38, told Reuters that in December 2012 Russian intelligence officers presented him with an unexpected offer. If he agreed to leaveRussia, the authorities would not arrest him. In fact, they would facilitate his departure.

"I was in hiding, I was part of an illegal armed group, I was armed," said Sharapudinov during an interview in a country outside Russia. Yet he says the authorities cut him a deal. "They said: 'We want you to leave.'"

Sharapudinov agreed to go. A few months later, he was given a new passport in a new name, and a one-way plane ticket to Istanbul. Shortly after arriving in Turkey, he crossed into Syria and joined an Islamist group that would later pledge allegiance to radical Sunni group Islamic State.

Reuters has identified five other Russian radicals who, relatives and local officials say, also left Russia with direct or indirect help from the authorities and ended up in Syria. The departures followed a pattern, said Sharapudinov, relatives of the Islamists and former and acting officials: Moscow wanted to eradicate the risk of domestic terror attacks, so intelligence and police officials turned a blind eye to Islamic militants leaving the country. Some sources say officials even encouraged militants to leave.

The scheme continued until at least 2014, according to acting and former officials as well as relatives of those who left. The cases indicate the scheme ramped up ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics because the Russian authorities feared home-grown militants would try to attack the event.

The six Russian militants and radicals identified by Reuters all ended up in Syria, most of themfighting with jihadist groups that Russia now says are its mortal enemies. They were just a fraction of the radicals who left Russia during that period. By December 2015, some 2,900 Russians had left to fight in the Middle East, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, the Russian security service, said at a sitting of the National Anti-terrorist Committee late last year. According to official data, more than 90 percent of them left Russia after mid-2013.

"Russian is the third language in the Islamic State after Arabic and English. Russia is one of its important suppliers of foreign fighters," said Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, a senior analyst for International Crisis Group, an independent body aimed at resolving conflicts.

"Before the Olympics, Russian authorities didn't prevent departures and a big number of fighters left Russia. There was a very specific short-term task to ensure security of the Olympics ... They turned a blind eye on the flow of radical youth" to the Middle East.

Moscow is now fighting Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria that the Kremlin says pose a threat to the security of Russia and the world. The Kremlin has justified its campaign of air strikes in Syria by saying its main objective was to crush Islamic State.

Russian authorities deny they ever ran a program to help militants leave the country. They say militants left of their own volition and without state help. Officials, including FSB director Bortnikov and authorities in the North Caucasus, have blamed the departures on Islamic State recruiters and foreign countries who give radicals safe passage to Syria and elsewhere.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Reuters: "Russian authorities have never cooperated or interacted with terrorists. No interaction with terrorists was possible. Terrorists get annihilated in Russia. It has always been like that, it is like that and it will be in the future."

The Foreign Ministry said claims that Russian law enforcement agencies had helped militants were "without grounds." It said the agencies take various measures to prevent militants from leaving and to bring to account those who come back. It added that Russia has opened hundreds of criminal cases relating to Russian citizens fighting in Syria, and that therefore it was "absurd" to believe officials had facilitated the departure of militants from Russia.

The Interior Ministry declined to comment, saying the FSB was in charge of the issue. The FSB in Dagestan declined immediate comment.

Mutual benefit

Allowing militants to leave Russia was convenient for both radicals and the authorities. In the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, the two sides had fought themselves to a stalemate.

The Islamist groups, fighting to establish a Muslim state in the region, were exhausted after years on the run and had failed to score any significant victories against security forces. The authorities were frustrated because the militants – holed up in remote mountain hideouts or protected by sympathizers – still eluded arrest.

Then from 2013 Islamists began threatening to attack the Sochi Olympics, posting videos of their threats online. An attack would embarrass Putin at an event meant to showcase Russia; Moscow ordered a crackdown.

A retired Russian special forces officer with years of battlefield experience in the North Caucasus told Reuters that the federal authorities put pressure on local officials to curb insurgency ahead of the Sochi games. "They told them before the Olympics that no failures would be forgiven and those who failed would be fired. They tightened the screws on them," he said.

The initial approach to Sharapudinov came from a political official in the militant's home village of Novosasitli in Dagestan, a region in the North Caucasus. The official, who has since retired, became the liaison between Sharapudinov and Russian security services. He confirmed Sharapudinov's account to Reuters.

It took Sharapudinov several months to decide whether to take up the offer of a deal. He eventually chose to trust the local official, whom he had known since childhood.

According to Sharapudinov, the intermediary took him to the town of Khasavyurt, where a high-ranking local FSB official was waiting. Though Sharapudinov had been given guarantees about his safety, he remained suspicious, he said. So he took along a pistol and a grenade in his pocket, despite a condition that he should come unarmed.

Sharapudinov had never previously tried to leave Russia, even clandestinely, because he thought he might be caught or shot. And leaving Russia openly would have been impossible because he was on a wanted list on suspicion of being involved in a bombing. If caught and convicted, he faced eight years to life in prison.

But now, according to Sharapudinov, the FSB officer said he was free to leave Russia and that the state would help him go.

"They said: 'Go wherever you want, you can even go fight in Syria,'" Sharapudinov told Reuters in December. He recalled that the Olympics came up in the negotiations. "They said something like, 'to let the Olympics pass without incidents.' They didn't conceal they were sending out others as well," he said.

New name 

Sharapudinov had his own reasons for leaving Russia. There were tensions between him and the local emir, who was also the commander of the militant group to which he belonged. When Sharapudinov told his mother of the FSB's offer, she tearfully asked him to take it, he said, because she did not want him to be a fugitive any longer.

The plan required the involvement of more state machinery: Sharapudinov needed a new passport to leave Russia, according to the former local official who acted as a go-between.

"Since he was on the wanted list, they couldn't send him out otherwise," the former official told Reuters.

Sharapudinov said he was handed a new passport when he arrived at the Mineralnye Vody airport in southern Russia in September 2013, where he was escorted by an FSB employee in a silver Lada car with darkened windows. Along with the passport he got a one-way ticket to Turkey.

Sharapudinov showed Reuters the passport that he said had been supplied by the Russian state. It had a slightly different name and date of birth to those recorded for Sharapudinov on an official list of wanted militants. The photograph showed Sharapudinov, who had a beard when he was interviewed for this article, as shaved. He said he had got rid of his beard for the new passport.

While Reuters was unable to confirm the provenance of the passport, neighbors of Sharapudinov and the former official who acted as a go-between confirmed his identity and his story of how hegot the document. Sharapudinov asked that the name in the passport, which he uses as his new identity, not be published.

North Caucasus security officials deny that Islamist radicals were intentionally helped out of the country, but agree their absence helped to solve security problems in the region. "Of course, the departure of Dagestani radicals in large numbers made the situation in the republic healthier," said Magomed Abdurashidov from the Anti-terrorist Commission of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

A security services officer who took part in negotiations with militants from Novosasitli confirmed that a few fighters "laid down arms and came out" from hiding before later traveling to Syria. "Since they disarmed we stopped prosecuting them," he said.

He said there were cases over a few years but that it had nothing to do with the Sochi Games. He said the security services did not help anyone leave. "If no measures are being taken against them, according to law, they have same rights as every Russian citizen," he said. "They could get an international passport and leave."

The security services officer said he did not know Sharapudinov's case.

Suddenly disappeared

When Sharapudinov got to Syria, he said, Islamic State was on the rise but did not control much territory. He joined a rebel group called Sabri Jamaat with other fighters from Russia and post-Soviet states. They were based in Al Dana near Aleppo, and Islamic State controlled neighboring territory.

According to Sharapudinov, the two groups were friendly toward each other. Later, Sabri Jamaat pledged allegiance to Islamic State, though Sharapudinov said that by that time he had quitfighting and left Syria. He declined to say whether he had seen other Dagestani radicals in Syria.

Reuters independently found details of five other militants who left Russia in similar circumstances to Sharapudinov. The five are either dead, in jail or still in Syria and unreachable.

Relatives, neighbors and local officials gave accounts of what happened to the men. The five shared some common threads: They were all from Dagestan, and Russian authorities had reason to deny them travel documents and prevent them from leaving the country. But according to relatives and local officials, in each case the authorities made their passage possible.

One of the five other militants who left Russia was Magomed Rabadanov from the village of Berikey. A local police officer in the village said that in 2014 his orders were to keep a close eye on Rabadanov and other suspected radicals as part of a new security policy established before the Sochi Olympics.

He said he was told to put potential radicals on a watch list and to telephone them once a month. "If they didn't pick up, we had to find them," the officer said in his office, showing a Reuters reporter Rabadanov's profile on his computer monitor. The police officer said that during preparations for the Olympics, Rabadanov was listed as a person "with non-traditional Islamic beliefs, Wahhabism" -  the school of Sunni Islam known for its strict interpretation of the faith.

At one point, Rabadanov had been detained for keeping explosives at his home, according to his father, Suleiban Rabadanov, but had been released shortly afterwards and placed under house arrest instead.

Despite being under such restriction, Rabadanov was able to leave Russia: He passed through passport control at a Moscow international airport along with his wife and his son in May 2014, his father and the local police officer said. He later turned up in Syria, his father said. Government officials had no comment on Rabadanov.

Suleiban Rabadanov said he received a message on Jan. 2, 2015, from someone who said his son had been killed fighting with Islamic State militants against Kurdish forces near the Syrian town of Kobani, on the border with Turkey.

The father of another militant also said his son was allowed to leave Russia as part of a deal with the authorities. The former official who acted as the go-between in Sharapudinov's case said two other militants were helped to get passports.

Residents and officials in Dagestan said that once Russian militants arrived in Syria they encouraged others from their home communities to join them. From the village of Berikey, which has a population of 3,000, some 28 people left for areas of the Middle East controlled by Islamic State, according to the local police officer. He said 19 of the 28 were listed in Russia as radicals.

In a police station near Berikey, a Reuters reporter saw a computer file on dozens of suspected militants. The file was entitled "Wahs," an abbreviation the police use for "Wahhabis."

Some pictures showed groups of bearded young men from Berikey and nearby villages, posing with guns. The officer said the photographs, found or received online, showed the men in Syriaand Iraq.

SEE ALSO: Top US military official: Russia has made it 'very clear' that it's not really in Syria to fight ISIS

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